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GC favorite points

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As a Premium Member of Geocaching.com, you now have the ability to rate your favorite geocaches of all time.
Premium Members earn Favorite Points at a rate of 1 for every 10 geocaches found, and past finds contribute to the point total. By awarding a point to a favorite cache, you help call attention to the highest quality caches in your area and reward cache owners for placing exceptional caches.
The Favorite Points earned by a cache are tallied and displayed on each cache page and in the search results for everyone’s benefit. Premium Members have the additional perk of sorting search results by the most Favorited caches.

I like this idea, actually I started working on the same project, now I don't have to

I would rather not see any rating system other than word of mouth. And to gain those favorite points by the number of caches you found is far from the best in my opinion, it seems it will just promote finding more numbers.

I think a much better plan would be a point for every year you are as member of gc.com, two points for every year you are a premium member of gc.com, and one point for every point one of your hides gets.

That being said, this system is better than many that have been proposed.

I would rather not see any rating system other than word of mouth. And to gain those favorite points by the number of caches you found is far from the best in my opinion, it seems it will just promote finding more numbers.

I think a much better plan would be a point for every year you are as member of gc.com, two points for every year you are a premium member of gc.com, and one point for every point one of your hides gets.

That being said, this system is better than many that have been proposed.

Why should premium members get extra points? You can as well sell points in packages 100 points for $20, 500 points just for $50 (you save $50)
Why should it depend on how many years you have been caching? Why should people who cache a lot (and therefore have seen a lot) get less points than somebody who registered many years ago and found just few caches behind their backyard? Also getting a point for every rewarded point you get is unsustainable, total number of points will grow quadratically and at some point there will be more available reward points than available caches.

Giving the extra point to premium members is an incentive for people to support the website. That is a good thing IMO.

Giving points for years caching would start the whole process. There has to be a few points in someone's possession in order for the rest of this system to function.

Perhaps the points per point idea could use some refinement, either a cap on the max, or maybe only get a percentage of the points for your 5 highest favorited caches.

I'm sure it could be made to work to some extent. No rating system is perfect, most are usually far from perfect. And in the grand scheme of things it does not matter because gc.com went with a different plan.

Giving the extra point to premium members is an incentive for people to support the website. That is a good thing IMO.

So is selling the points. Is it as stupid as rewarding souvenirs just for searching for caches using their paid application.

Originally Posted by brdad

Giving points for years caching would start the whole process. There has to be a few points in someone's possession in order for the rest of this system to function.

So you are saying that somebody who has found many caches has less favorites than someone who found just a few but has been caching longer?
How is that possible?

Originally Posted by brdad

Perhaps the points per point idea could use some refinement, either a cap on the max, or maybe only get a percentage of the points for your 5 highest favorited caches.

I'm sure it could be made to work to some extent.

Sure, for example having no extra points for rewarded points. Otherwise you will be creating infinite number of points out of nowhere.

Originally Posted by brdad

No rating system is perfect, most are usually far from perfect. And in the grand scheme of things it does not matter because gc.com went with a different plan.

No rating system is a subset of a rating system. Therefore a rating system is no worst than no rating system no matter what is the rating based on. If you don't like the rating system, just ignore it and you will be exactly where you were with no rating system.

There is a fixed percentage of caches you love, more you cache more you find (you love or don't) however the ratio will remain the same. That's why reward points should be a percentage from your total finds. It's that simple.

So you are saying that somebody who has found many caches has less favorites than someone who found just a few but has been caching longer?
How is that possible?

Originally Posted by cano

There is a fixed percentage of caches you love, more you cache more you find (you love or don't) however the ratio will remain the same. That's why reward points should be a percentage from your total finds. It's that simple.

I think the number of caches found has little bearing on how many favorite caches a particular cacher has, and I can't imagine why you think it is a fixed ratio. No cacher is guaranteed to have 10% favorites. A cacher with a larger number of finds may have (but not guaranteed) a larger variety of finds to choose from, but they could be of equal quality, resulting in them all being a favorites, or none. However, a cacher who hides caches other people consider favorites probably has a good idea what a good cache is.

A given cacher could find 1000 caches and have 2 favorites or 950 favorites. They may cache for years and only have a few favorites and then find a string of caches they love. They may have a low percentage of favorite caches they love and then a new cache type comes out and they love a higher percentage, or vise-versa. It is different for every cacher, and varies with time and available caches.

I think the number of caches found has little bearing on how many favorite caches a particular cacher has, and I can't imagine why you think it is a fixed ratio.

No cacher is guaranteed to have 10% favorites. A cacher with a larger number of finds may have (but not guaranteed) a larger variety of finds to choose from, but they could be of equal quality, resulting in them all being a favorites, or none. However, a cacher who hides caches other people consider favorites probably has a good idea what a good cache is.

A given cacher could find 1000 caches and have 2 favorites or 950 favorites. They may cache for years and only have a few favorites and then find a string of caches they love. They may have a low percentage of favorite caches they love and then a new cache type comes out and they love a higher percentage, or vise-versa. It is different for every cacher, and varies with time and available caches.

Favorite cache is not a 0/1 problem. Some are less favorite some are more. Sort all your caches you found by your favoriteness and pick top 10%, those are yours favorite caches for the purpose of rating.

Let M is a number of all caches in Maine I would really love and N is a number of all caches in Maine. Some people will be surprised with the following discovery, but if I pick randomly some caches the ratio of my favorites will be always near M/N

You said the points you get should be based on number of years you have been caching. Why don't you explain how your system deals with problems you described above. Also my parents has been registered on GC for few years and found zero caches. Why don't you ask them which are theirs favorites? I'm sure they would get plenty of points to reward.

Originally Posted by brdad

However, a cacher who hides caches other people consider favorites probably has a good idea what a good cache is

Probably, but how does it make him to find more favorite caches? Will he get suddenly some magical ability to see whether he likes the cache before he finds it?

You said the points you get should be based on number of years you have been caching. Why don't you explain how your system deals with problems you described above.

My idea is awarding points on member years only for the purpose of seeding the whole system, and so that even those who do not place caches get a few points. It is more based on the points you'd get for having your own caches favorited. This would hopefully encourage people to place caches which other people would mark as their favorite.

Originally Posted by cano

Also my parents has been registered on GC for few years and found zero caches. Why don't you ask them which are theirs favorites? I'm sure they would get plenty of points to reward.

That part is easy. You can only favorite caches you have found. I'm hoping the current favorite system is set up that way too - it'd be silly to be able to mark caches you have not found as favorites. And they would only have 2 points for two years, if they went out and found two caches and marked them as favorites, it would not skew the system on a large scale.

Originally Posted by cano

Probably, but how does it make him to find more favorite caches? Will he get suddenly some magical ability to see whether he likes the cache before he finds it?

Unfortunately it doesn't, no plan does. There is no product or service which can lead someone to only caches that particular cacher will find as a favorite. Just because a cache is my favorite does not mean it will be yours. I've seen high rated movies that I thought sucked and low rated movies I think are pretty good. Sometimes it may have been a decent movie but I was not in the mood for that type of movie so I thought less of it. We all have different ideas of what a favorite cache is, and that varies per individual on a daily basis, and caches often vary in quality with the seasons and other circumstances.

My idea is awarding points on member years only for the purpose of seeding the whole system, and so that even those who do not place caches get a few points. It is more based on the points you'd get for having your own caches favorited. This would hopefully encourage people to place caches which other people would mark as their favorite.

I understand what you mean, but the goal is not to earn as many points as you can. It could be a different game, I'm sure there will be statistics of cachers who have earned the most points soon.

The goal is to mark top N caches you liked and because a number of caches you liked is related to a number of caches you found it's a good idea to calculate N as percentage of all caches you found.